Three Air Force sites in Colorado will adopt the Space Force name next week, as the newest military branch looks to further cement a separate culture from the other armed forces.

Those installations will become Schriever Space Force Base, Peterson SFB and Cheyenne Mountain Space Force Station at ceremonies on July 26. Colorado is home to a massive military space community and currently hosts U.S. Space Command headquarters as well as satellite control, missile defense and intelligence units.

A fourth site, Cavalier Air Force Station in North Dakota, will also transfer to the Space Force on July 30, according to Space Force spokesperson Lynn Kirby. Cavalier’s 10th Space Warning Squadron tracks ballistic missiles, satellites and other manmade objects above the earth.

The Space Force, created in December 2019, provides SPACECOM with the personnel and resources that the command needs to run daily space operations. The combatant command was revived in August 2019, after being closed for 17 years.

Each installation will transfer into the Space Force for management but will remain owned by the Department of the Air Force, which oversees the space service.

The Colorado locations will join Buckley SFB in the same state; Patrick SFB and Cape Canaveral SFS, Florida; Vandenberg SFB, California; Kaena Point SFS, Hawaii; and New Boston SFS, New Hampshire.

Los Angeles Air Force Base, California, which handles acquisition, and Thule Air Base in Greenland, another missile defense site, are still awaiting a rebranding. The military hasn’t yet decided when those changes will happen.

“Thule, of course, has to be worked through the State Department,” Kirby noted.

Rachel Cohen is the editor of Air Force Times. She joined the publication as its senior reporter in March 2021. Her work has appeared in the Washington Post, the Frederick News-Post (Md.), Air and Space Forces Magazine, Inside Defense, Inside Health Policy and elsewhere.

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